Why I Don’t Believe in Budgeting

I don’t budget. Maybe I should. Some people would probably argue that I should. Most don’t even care.

But I don’t. And I stand by it.

The reason that I don’t is because for most people it doesn’t work (including myself). For psychological reasons that are beyond my pay-grade, people just can’t stick to a budget. So why fish in an empty barrel? Let’s find a different way to be smart about finances.

Which is why I reverse budget. (I couldn’t think of a better name, but if you can please email me at charlie@thegenzguide.com)

Reverse budgeting is essentially looking at the past month of spending, seeing how much you spent in each category (Rocket Money can help with this) and having that understanding going in to the next month. For me, once I see that I spent an unnatural amount on coffee, golf, take-out, or something else, for some reason my brain remembers that every time I’m confronted with a purchase during the following month. And as a result, I spend less the following month on said categories. I wish I could tell you why, but it works.

When I plan out a budget and see that I’m only supposed to spend so much on a specific category, I don’t stick to it. You can tell me, “try harder”, or “grow up and be an adult”, or “this is what’s wrong with our generation. No one wants to do the hard things anymore. Everyone wants things to be easy.”.

I don’t care.

I’ll stick to my reverse budgeting strategy.